Everything You Need To Know About Salesforce Data Integration

Salesforce data integration means connecting Salesforce to one or more other systems or apps, so that they share data with each other. This makes it easy for people working in one system to see vital data from another system, saves resources and streamlines processes.

In short, it makes getting great results in business easier and cheaper.

What can you integrate with Salesforce?

Data integration can just mean adding another cloud-based program to Salesforce. You can do this with some common apps very easily from within the Salesforce system. You can integrate Slack, for example, to make it really simple for your sales team to communicate and collaborate, with all the information they need to talk about right there. Or, you could integrate Salesforce with LinkedIn, so all the leads you gather there go straight onto the Salesforce system.

You can also integrate Salesforce with systems that are completely separate from it. Why would you want to do that? Because you’ll often hold data about your customers in other places than Salesforce, and because your staff will often need to access data from other teams.

Integration makes this happen and, fortunately, there are a lot of Salesforce data integration tools that will make the process easy.

Salesforce-ERP integration

The most common, and for many businesses, the most useful, integration you can put in place is between Salesforce and an ERP, or enterprise resource planning system.

ERPs work well alongside a CRM and most businesses that are big enough to have one are big enough to need the other. Some ERPs have a built-in CRM, but if you’re using Salesforce, how do you exchange data between them?

Your ERP holds data that is vital to good customer relations, such as on finances and inventory. At some point, it is inevitable that people working in sales and marketing, who’d usually only normally use a CRM, will need to access some data from an ERP.

An ERP integration can’t be set up from within Salesforce, but it’s not necessarily complicated. You will, though, probably need to use a specialist provider. Many of them offer easy, cloud-based solutions that will meet the needs of most businesses, and can be set up in a few hours. Take a look at this infographic to find out more about them.

Also Read: Top 5 Best CRM Tools for Business

Benefits of Salesforce data integration:

You’ll save resources

When you don’t integrate data, you end up sharing it manually. But manual data sharing will cost your business money. It takes people time to put data into spreadsheets or to email it to colleagues. And when they do that, they inevitably make mistakes. It’s not difficult to see that a small mistake made when copying data, a mistake in a name, for example, could easily spiral into a serious reputational and technical headache.

You’ll build better business foundations

Data integration means that everyone in your business always has access to good quality data, updated in real-time. That means that they’re much better able to spot problems and solutions and make well-founded forecasts and decisions.

You’ll grow

You can’t grow a business in a data-driven world without good data. Your data is your business’ biggest tool – integration means you can make the most of it.